As far as Ginny Stine is concerned, there is no better or more appropriate place than Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church for her to debut her painting expertise.

Ginny Stine in her San Marco studio

The San Marco interior designer and resident, who paints as a hobby, will hold her first formal art show, “Animated by Detail: Oil Paintings of Ginny Stine,” in the Transitional Gallery of the sanctuary narthex at the church at 4001 Hendricks Ave. An opening day reception will be held Wednesday, Sept. 21 from 5-7 p.m., and the exhibit will continue until November.

The gallery is open each Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to noon or may be accessed through the church office Monday through Friday during business hours.

Although she no longer attends the Baptist church on Hendricks Avenue, the long-time San Marco resident said her grandparents, Edward and Mildred Knopf, were founding members and she grew up in the church and was “in the cradle roll.”

“My grandfather was a deacon. He was there when it started,” she said. “It was a wonderful experience growing up in that church.”

With no specific training in oil painting or art prior to college, Stine graduated with high honors from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Design degree from its College of Architecture. She has worked as an interior designer, specializing in residential and commercial design, for 49 years and founded her interior design studio on San Marco Boulevard in 1979.

Feathered Scamp, by Ginny Stine

An award winner who has been recognized by the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, San Marco Preservation Society, the American Society of Interior Designers, and Designer magazine, Stine was also been employed for 20 years as an instructor of interior design at Jacksonville University through the Dawn Program. For many years, she has designed textiles and wallcoverings for fabric companies, and continues to create fine jewelry.

Self-described as one of the “last of the photo realists,” Stine said it takes between 50 to 150 hours for her to finish an oil painting, and she sells only signed limited-edition giclée prints of her work, which are priced by the square inch.“My painting is a hobby that I am happy to share, but not the originals,” she said, noting after spending so much of her life on each piece, she refuses to part with them.

In the past, Stine has displayed one or two of her works at Reddi-Arts, a San Marco art supply store, where she often paints with her friend, Allison Watson, but has never been featured in a major show like the one at HAB, where she will be the sole artist with approximately 50 paintings on display.

Many of her paintings are still-life renderings of objects she has found near her cabin in Cashiers, North Carolina, where she does most of her work. Others depict birds or Ethiopian tribespeople in primitive headdresses.

“I paint them for the joy of painting them. When I choose a subject I’ve got to love it because I’m going to spend a lot of time with that subject,” she said, noting she loves fruits and vegetables and has many “collections” of them. She is fascinated by the natives of the Omo Valley in Ethiopia and has painted a series of tribal portraits.

“They are nomadic. When they get up in the morning they are going to either eat or be eaten,” she said, noting the natives have no way to view their reflections. “They have no clear water so they don’t know what they look like. They get up in the morning and they decorate their bodies. They have to paint each other because they don’t know what they look like and they can’t see [themselves]. The most important thing to them is decorating their bodies with flowers and twigs,” she continued, adding they use three stratas of clay to make pigments of white, gold or rust. “The thought that design could absolutely drive your existence was familiar to me,” she said.

As a child, Stine taught herself to draw with crayons and pencils and learned embroidery at age five, but it wasn’t until she saw the movie, “Auntie Mame,” at the Atlantic Drive-in when she was 12 that she knew she wanted to be an interior designer. “She (Auntie Mame) redecorated her apartment five times, and that was the first time I knew that was a career option for somebody to do that, and I said ‘I’m going to do that.’ So these other things (painting, textiles and jewelry) are the icing on the cake along with my true design. I’m a designer first and foremost, but I enjoy painting,” she said. “Beauty and aesthetics are always in my line of sight and they can take many forms,” she said.